What workflows or automations have stuck/paid off for you?

First and maybe most pivotal step for me is always to find a version of the schedule that I can open in a spreadsheet. The NHL doesn’t appear to offer that on its main site, but I found one on the media site at the bottom of this page.

I start by doing some data cleaning in the spreadsheet, eliminating columns I don’t want and changing some formatting with find and replace. For instance, I’d use three-letter city abbreviations instead of the full city names this spreadsheet uses. Much easier to read in Monthly view or when you’re checking an iPhone calendar. I used to have AppleScript make that change programmatically, but it’s a little brittle (the way I know how to do it with my primitive coding skills), so eventually I just started doing it during the cleaning stage.

Once I have the data cleaned, I have an AppleScript go row-by-row, assigning each row/event to a calendar. I’ve switched back and forth between using Fantastical or Calendar as the target app, although off the top of my head I can’t remember why. I think maybe Fantastical chokes on certain symbols or something. I’ll take a look at my scripts when I have a chance. (Only have my iPad with me right now.) I think they could be generalized fairly easily.

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I also tried Hey.com and adopted the ideas to Fastmail.

Created a small guide many months ago. Wanted to also create guides for other mail providers but never did.

Feel free to have a look

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This is great info, and yes please by all means if you think of it later take a look at the scripts, it’s much appreciated.

This is brilliant. I just set up a Hazel rule for this! Thanks.

My two most-used workflows are pretty simple:

  1. Reply with signed PDFs. My secretary sends me letters/documents that I need to review and sign. I open the attachment in Preview and add my signature there. I then have a keystroke which prints to PDF, puts that PDF in Yoink, closes the original PDF, and starts a reply to my secretary’s message. I then drag the signed PDF from Yoink to the email message and send it back. I could probably automate that last step if I dug into it, or just have my secretary add my signature herself, but that’s something to set up another day.

  2. Automate “Last Actions” with Things. I’ve written in another thread about how “Next Actions” in GTD never worked for me, but “Last Actions” clicked and I’ve been using them for a few years. In Things, I put my cursor in the main line of a task and type “;do”. Keyboard Maestro cuts the task out of the task field and moves it to the top of the note field, and returns the cursor to the task field and inserts the date, where I can type what I just did (rarely with a quick mention about what I need to do next, because it is usually obvious in my line of work).

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Hammerspoon and KM have a lot of overlap. The biggest difference is that you write Hammerspoon actions in code (lua, specifically), while KM has a more visual interface.

I mostly use Hammerspoon for what think of as modal, interfaceless automation.

So for example, I have several automations that start with a keypress; that puts me in a particular mode, but there isn’t necessarily a visual indicator that I’ve entered Mode X. Then I press another key – that amounts to selecting an option from a conflict palette in KM, and determines which automation will be run; then I get a prompt for some text entry; and that text is used to complete a URL that Hammerspoon then opens. It relies on muscle memory.

I could accomplish the same thing in KM, and I used to use KM before switching to Hammerspoonn for these automations. But I find KM is more unwieldy when it comes to nesting if statements or otherwise building in several variations to a given workflow. And it was ever so slightly less reliable at times (for example, I find KM’s dialogs don’t always vanish when I hit the escape key).

All in all, for some kinds of automation, Hammerspoon and lua make more sense. For others, KM does.

That said, if I need more of a user interface, I’ll probably go with KM. And I think KM has a bigger and beginner-friendlier support community.

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@tf2 Every time I look at Hammerspoon I find it intriguing, but as I know nothing of Lua I put it aside for another day. As the weather turns cold in these parts and I look for more indoor activities to pursue that day may be upon me. Can you suggest a good starting point for learning Lua? Thanks.

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Absolutely. Some suggestions:

A big caveat: I came to lua after getting pretty good at python, which I did after getting OK at php, which I did after taking a single Java evening course, which I took years after dabbling in AppleSoft Basic and Tutor in my youth. So it was fairly approachable for me.

If you’ve programmed much at all in modern languages, including python and I think JavaScript, a lot of lua will be somewhat familiar. If you haven’t, and want to avoid some headaches, consider taking an online or in person beginning class in pretty much any scripting language – I’ve never touched Java again after that one class, but it was invaluable in understanding how to think about coding.

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Like many of you, I don’t have huge workflow automations, but a lot of small ones which I love.

Automations

  • Creating a daily note with all my (work) appointments and opening that file at the right spot. Usually I am too lazy to take little notes here and there, but with this file always there, it is so simple that I actually write them down. I just write down everything in there. If needed later, I can split it into separate notes. It is the information I would no take “on purpose” that I get by having the note always ready.
  • Sorting away frequently downloaded files.

Keyboard centric

  • Keyboard shortcut to open a new empty browser in the middle of the main screen (otherwise I get often stuck with the open tabs and don’t do, what I set out to do)
  • Keyboard shortcut to show the notification center, this shows me the calendar for the day. For me it is usually simple things like that, but if I was to move to another space to my calendar app, there is a chance I would get lost doing other stuff.
  • Having a split keyboard with multiple thumb keys and a custom layout. Think hyper key on steroids. Then think of something even better. It is at least that good. All those thumb key can be pressed for another layer. Eg I have cut copy paste on the homerow (default position of the fingers). Very small gain, but also very often used. (Maybe think of Streamdeck, but without moving away your fingers from your keyboard. It comes also with keys arranged in colums :wink: )
  • Simple window management (I use btt for that because it can handle moving windows across spaces very well)
  • I use the vimari plugin for safari. The main shortcuts I use are next tab, previous tab and close tab. Those are all single key shortcuts. This makes browsing with a lot of tabs a breeze. Use case: searching for something, opening possible hits in new tabs, quickly going through them to compare.
  • I have an Alfred workflow to open a new Things window (again middle of the main screen) with a specific project, area or tag (search based). I have also saved some combinations. This makes taking a quick glance at a context (eg a person when in a call) so simple that I actually do it.

All those things reduce friction, which in turn makes me continue what I was doing. The gain in (micro-)seconds might be very little, but the gain in not stopping the flow is huge. Or in doing something at all, because it takes almost no effort.

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Back when I had an iMac instead of a laptop, I had automations in place for backups that were really handy (as one or two others have mentioned).

But the best part of those automations was setting them up for specific times: in the morning, I would have the drives unmount from the Mac (while remaining physically plugged in). Since the drives weren’t unmounted, I would never hear my spinning disks click during the day.

After midnight, I would have the iMac mount the hard drives and let Time Machine and whatever else do it’s thing until 9am.

The whole thing was set up in Keyboard Maestro using AppleScript. I can see if I still have those scripts for mounting and unmounting drives if anybody would find them useful.

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Related to this, I have Thunderbird configured to store the email library in an external drive folder. I have a BTT automation that launches Thunderbird as soon as the exact volume name is present, and unmounts it when I close Thunderbird, and the same with Logic Pro, because my sample libraries are on a external drive.

This is more convenient than it sounds (I know if I plug the drive, the app will be there in a second or two) and also avoids unclean mounts.

Are you able to share this workflow please?

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brand or model?..……………

The “perspectives” are defined in a JXA file. It is not programming, but not the most user friendly.
And you need to have python 3 installed (which I think it is on current macOS).
Also I found a file in the workflow folder I’m not sure what it does …
I will try to clean it up a bit and then share it. Let’s say it’s alpha but usable.

It is a kyria from splitkb.
I got mine build by a local shop, it was very expansive (because they’re not used to this fiddly stuff). Either you can solder yourself or find someone who can do it and likes keybords (or keebs, as they say :wink: ).
Splitkb will release “soon” a similar keyboard that has a number row and does not require soldering. For most people more buttons = better.
If price is a concern, you can go with the cheapest case (I did).
You still need keycaps and switches, both of which can be very deep rabbit holes. You have been warned.

Otherwise there are a lot of ready to use split keyboards, usually at quite a steep price though.
Also I am not a person for multiple keyboards (I tell myself), however I am on the kickstarter for the glove80 which has bluetooth. I just need to find the right keyboard an then stick with it …

But if it weren’t for bluetooth, or I could solder myself, then I would not look further than the kyria. There are also options to give the kyria bluetooth support, but I realized that I just want the hardware to work out of the box. I usually fiddle with the software at some point. If this makes you nervous, nearly all of them have some GUI to click together your keymaps, so programming is usually not needed.

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What app do you use for your daily note?

thanks for the warning!

Obsidian for organization of notes.
However I open most of my notes and my daily notes especially in Typora.
I just like the look and simplicity, and at the time it was not possible to “open note in new window” in Obsidian. I think it is possible now though.

The note is generated at night by Shortcuts on my phone and synced via iCloud. On my computer Shortcuts opens the file on login (maybe that Shortcut is triggered via Hammerspoon, who knows how all the magic is happening :person_shrugging:). Sometimes it is not synced yet, will improve this at some point. Currently I just lock the computer and unlock it again …

Other topic:
I am in the process of cleaning up the Things Perspectives Alfred Workflow. Might take Stimme time but will post it eventually.

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I gave the workflow its own thread

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There is one more workflow I wanted to share. It is very minor, but also very useful.

In an episode of Automators Rosemary mentioned, that the autocomplete/text replacement built into iOS can do newline, if you define them on the mac.

Not intuitive. That’s why I wanted to share it (again), so more people know.

Especially on the phone autocomplete is very helpful. At some point I had to send the same long reply to almost all emails coming to a certain address. I had to read them first, but 99% of the time I just wanted to hit “saved reply”.

Well, this solved it for me, as you can save any (text only) email in the autocomplete system, if you do it from the Mac.

The same is also true for salutations which usually contain line breaks.

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